-but
our sufficiency is of God." The seeing of grace in ourselves doth not
prejudge the grace of God, unless we see it independent of the fountain,
and behold not the true rise of it, that we may have no matter to glory
of. It is not a safe way of beholding the sun, to look straight on it. It
is too dazzling to our weak eyes,--you shall not well take it up so. But
the best way is to look on it in water; then we shall more steadfastly
behold it. God's everlasting love, and the redemption of Jesus Christ, is
too glorious an object to behold with the eyes of flesh. Such objects
certainly must astonish and strike the spirits of men with their
transcendent brightness. Therefore we must look on the beams of this sun,
as they are reflected in our hearts; and so behold the conformity of our
souls, wrought by his Spirit, unto his will; and then we shall know the
thoughts of his soul to us. If men shall at the first flight climb so
high, as to be persuaded of God's eternal love, and Christ's purchase for
them in particular, they can do no more, but scorch their wings, and melt
the wax of them, till they fall down from that heaven of their ungrounded
persuasion, into a pit of desperation. The Scripture way is to go downward
once, that ye may go up. First go down in yourselves, and make your
calling sure, and then you may rise up to God, and make your election
sure. You must come by this circle; there is no passing by a direct line,
and straight through, unless by the immediate revelation of the Spirit,
which is not ordinary and constant, and so not to be pretended unto.

I confess, that sometimes the Spirit may intimate to the soul God's
thoughts towards it, and its own state and condition, by an immediate
overpowering testimony, that puts to silence all doubts and objections,
that needs no other work or mark to evidence the sincerity and reality of
it. That light of the Spirit shall be seen in its own light, and needs not
that any witness of it. The Spirit of God sometimes may speak to a
soul,--"Son, be of good comfort, thy sins are forgiven thee." This may
break into the soul as a beam darted from heaven, without reference to any
work of the Spirit upon the heart, or word of Scripture, as a mids(164) or
mean to apply it. But this is more extraordinary. The ordinary testimony
of the Spirit is certainly conjoined with the testimony of our own
consciences, Rom. viii. 16. And our consciences bear witness of the work
of the Spirit in